Various sorting devices and methodology have been developed through the years for the purposes of identifying defective produce in a stream of produce so as to provide a uniformly sorted produce stream which may be utilized for various end uses. In U.S. patent application Ser. No. 13/373,622 which was filed on Nov. 22, 2011, the teachings of which are incorporated by reference herein, a sorting apparatus is described and which has particular usefulness in sorting a stream of grapes which might be subsequently processed for use in wine production, for example. The sorting apparatus as described in this co-pending application is useful, in particular, in identifying ruptured or damaged grapes which have been separated from associated stem material and further is operable to remove non-grape substances, so-called, Material Other Than Grapes (MOG) from the stream of grapes which are being processed.
In this co-pending patent application, a prior art de-stemming apparatus comprising a drum-and-beater arrangement is employed and which separates the grapes from the stem material (MOG). The separated grapes are thereafter directed to an inspection station where they are optically inspected and then separated from MOG so as to provide a uniform final grape product stream which may be processed for wine production, and the like.
The prior art drum-and-beater de-stemmers produce a relatively large quantity of stem pieces which are known in the industry as “jacks.” The production of MOG complicates the effective sorting of the resulting separated individual berries. It has been discovered, that the present prior art de-stemmer designs produce a fair amount of smashed, or split grapes which are considered to be a lost product. In prior art practices, the smashed/split grapes, and jack stems are removed mechanically, typically with vibrating screens or in the case of the above-identified earlier filed pending U.S. application are removed optically. It has been discovered that these two defects, that being the split grapes, and large numbers of jack-stems may tend to cause optical sorting problems during the sorting process, and therefore as a result, good grape product is often lost during the separation process. Therefore, high density product passing through the inspection station will typically result in ejected good product along with defective products. In the prior art drum-and-beater arrangement, the device literally beats the individual berries off of the stem. The high speed rotation of the beater also tends to impact the individual grapes producing many split-skin berries. This same impact of the beaters often breaks the main stem into smaller pieces which then have to be removed by the sorting station which is positioned downstream from the de-stemmer. This high concentration of split grapes, and jacks (MOG) suggests that the prior art drum-and-beater de-stemmer designs are aggressive in their material handling qualities, and therefore produces a needless amount of defective downstream product.
A grape processing apparatus and method which avoids the detriments individually associated with the prior art devices employed heretofore for separating grapes from their associated stem material is the subject matter of the present patent application.